Nowadays, it is typical for a business organization to communicate with clients and the general public through a number of media channels in order to promote sales or to improve public relations. For example, a company may maintain a website to provide information related to corporate background, products and services, sales and promotions, etc. The company may interact directly with current or potential clients through its retail and customer services divisions. It may also contact current or potential clients through direct mailing or telemarketing. In addition, it may place advertisements via mass media such as newspapers, magazines, or radio and television broadcast. It may also display messages and/or advertisements on display-boards in public places or at public events.
Depending on specific topics, the targeted audience and carrier channels, these communications often vary substantially in their content, format and level of detail. For example, mass media advertisements and/or messages include general communications targeted at a large group of consumers. Due to the high costs of mass media channels, the language and format for these communications are typically short and concise. Direct mailings usually include specific offers tailored for individuals or families. This type of communication tends to be more personalized and more detailed. Interactive media such as Internet websites favor yet another style of communications, which can be both generalized and individualized if necessary. For example, on the one hand a website can provide general information regarding the company and its products and services to a visitor. On the other hand, the website may also need to generate personalized content through an interaction with the visitor. In addition, an Internet website may enjoy a number of electronic publishing abilities, such as animations and pop-out banners, not available to other media channels.
With the great variety of media channels available, a modem organization can be empowered to strengthen its relationship with existing clients, to extend its reach to potential clients, and to enhance its public image and public relations, provided that communications through the multiple channels are properly managed and coordinated.
However, existing business communications and marketing solutions generally do not meet such requirements. Many solutions are typically single-functioned in that they each only deal with one or two media channels at a time. For example, some targeted marketing processes are capable of inserting variable information into client communications which are only in printed format. These processes usually cannot be easily modified to accommodate a different set of data or content or support publishing through other media channels (e.g., Internet banners). As a result, they cannot readily respond to fast-changing business demands with effective coordination. In many organizations, variable content for one media channel are managed separately from those for another channel, where the redundant development and maintenance may lead to waste of resources and inconsistencies among the different channels. Those inconsistencies may cause customer dissatisfaction and even raise legal or compliance issues. Further, most existing content management implementations typically lack the ability to share content and data assets among different lines of business due to the complexity of decisioning process flows to multiple presentation channels. Most content management tools lack the ability to pass decisioning functionality to the presentation layers. Few of them facilitate efficient change management or reliable direct auditing.
For example, in a traditional direct mail process, in order to generate the required direct mail pieces for a marketing campaign, the business has to create a massive target list by sorting a population database and tagging selected entries with cell codes. The target list file is then delivered to a print vendor together with pre-composed layout files. The print vendor typically has to re-key or import layout files into their systems using placeholders for variable data that will be input from the list file. Based on the logic and business rules which are usually provided by the business in the form of written instructions, the print vendor will have to program variability instructions to match the variable data to the layout files. The print vendor also has to re-create the formatting information based on instructions and samples provided. Next, the list file is loaded into a computer system where the cell codes of the variable data are matched to the printed forms by executing the variability instructions. Samples of the printouts will be manually verified by the business before mass printing is allowed to proceed. For another cycle of direct mailing, much of the work will have to be re-created or repeated. As can be seen, the whole process is far from streamlined and there is plenty of room for errors to be introduced.
In a traditional web content management process the content is managed directly in the tool that is deploying the content on the web. If that content is used elsewhere in the business, it must usually be updated in multiple locations. Additionally, web deployments, too, lack the ability to pass or receive the decisioning rules.
Other problems and drawbacks also exist.
In view of the foregoing, it would desirable to provide a solution for managing and delivering enterprise content which overcomes the above-described deficiencies and shortcomings.